Sometime between Trent Dilfer and the Ravens winning the Super Bowl and now the NFL became utterly dominated by the pass. A team needs to be able to either pass at an elite level or stop the pass at an elite level, and it certainly helps if you can do both. If you expect to win with just a running game and a run-stuffing defense, the odds are not in your favor. Don’t believe me? Since PFF started in 2008 no team has even beento the Super Bowl without finishing in the Top 10 in PFF’s overall passing. Then in the Super Bowl matchups, the team that won has had the higher PFF pass coverage grade every time. So yes, the forward pass is important.

That brings us to PFF’s Signature Stat, Accuracy Percentage. Traditional completion percentage is calculated by taking completions and dividing it by attempts. The problem with this simple formula is that not all incompletions are representative of a quarterback’s accuracy. Drops, throwaways, batted passes, spikes, and plays where the quarterback is hit while throwing are all incompletions that have no bearing on accuracy. So what we here at PFF did was treat those drops like completions and then take away all those other plays from attempts to give a quarterback’s true Accuracy Percentage. The final equation looks like this:

So far through five weeks of the season we have seen some surprising performances. What Robert Griffin III is doing in Washington is unprecedented. He leads the league with a score over seven percentage points higher than any rookie we’ve ever recorded (Matt Ryan’s 74.9% in 2008). He showed incredible accuracy at Baylor, but I’m not sure if anyone expected him to turn Washington’s offense into the eighth-highest scoring team. I don’t think anyone expected Jake Locker to come out in his second year throwing like he has either. His biggest question mark was his accuracy and it’s a shame he got hurt before he could really remove all doubt.

Some quarterbacks have really fallen victim to their receivers dropping balls. Brandon Weeden had a horrid opener, but since then it’s tough to make any summary judgments on him because his receivers have played so poorly. The same can be said for Blaine Gabbert. It’s tough to expect a young quarterback to succeed right away when there are so few offensive weapons around him.

#

Name

Team

Drop backs

Att.

Comp

Drops

TA

BP

SP

HAT

Acc. %

1

Robert Griffin III

WAS

166

139

96

9

3

2

2

4

82.0

2

Aaron Rodgers

GB

223

189

130

17

4

1

1

1

80.8

3

Alex D. Smith

SF

161

137

94

10

5

2

0

1

80.6

4

Jake Locker

TEN

115

106

67

12

2

2

0

3

79.8

5

Matt Ryan

ATL

220

199

136

14

6

3

0

1

79.4

6

Matthew Stafford

DET

187

173

114

16

4

2

2

0

78.8

7

Tom Brady

NE

199

185

124

14

6

2

1

0

78.4

8

Peyton Manning

DEN

209

197

130

17

4

3

1

1

78.2

9

Matt Schaub

HST

156

152

97

13

7

2

0

2

78.0

10

Christian Ponder

MIN

178

158

109

5

7

2

0

1

77.0

Looking at the foot of the list one can see how big an impact accuracy percentage has on an offense. The average points per game of the Top 10 is over five points higher than that of the Bottom 10. Some might not expect Joe Flacco to be this low, as his traditional completion percentage puts him 18th. Unfortunately, Flacco hasn’t evolved into an accurate quarterback so far this year and has really been helped by his receivers’ decreased drop rate. Another guy that hasn’t made the strides his team was hoping for is Mark Sanchez. Sanchez’ sub-50 completion percentage isn’t helped out much here as he is only on target 60% of the time. Jets fans calling for Tim Tebow should know, the only percentage we’ve seen lower than Sanchez’ this year was Tebow’s 2011 Accuracy Percentage.

#

Name

Team

Drop backs

Att.

Comp

Drops

TA

BP

SP

HAT

Acc. %

29

Joe Flacco

BLT

200

183

112

6

4

1

0

2

67.0

30

Josh Freeman

TB

130

119

65

7

5

3

0

3

66.7

31

Ryan Fitzpatrick

BUF

165

152

88

9

2

3

0

0

66.0

32

Andrew Luck

IND

199

177

96

10

3

3

4

5

65.4

33

Mark Sanchez

NYJ

169

159

77

10

4

5

1

4

60.0

Accuracy Percentage is very difficult for a quarterback to improve on over his career. Although we have seen how it can greatly affect a team’s winning percentage. The Top 10 quarterbacks in terms of Accuracy Percentage have averaged 9.5 wins over the past four seasons. Some of the biggest team turnarounds can be attributed to their quarterbacks being more accurate. The Buccaneers seven-win jump from 2009-2010 was accompanied by a 7.4 percentage point jump from Josh Freeman. The Colts went from 10 wins with Peyton Manning in 2010 to only two wins last year, while their quarterbacks’ Accuracy Percentage dropped 10.3 percentage points. Having an accurate quarterback is a necessity nowadays, and teams can’t hope to compete offensively when their quarterbacks are throwing the ball off target almost twice as much as the top quarterbacks.

I would be interested in seeing how this compares to yards per attempt. Flacco has been trying a lot of long balls to Torrey Smith, while guys like Alex Smith, Locker, and Stafford have had to largely settle for underneath balls this year.

Agreed. Or maybe create some kind of depth-adjusted accuracy percentage. Looking at the Deep Passing signature statistic page, 8 of the 10 players on the Acc% leaderboard threw deep on less than 10% of their passes, compared with 0 of the bottom 5. Flacco, Sanchez, and Luck are in the top 5 for highest percentage of deep passes.

Agreed again. For good or bad, I have seen almost every home game Josh Freeman has played in. I agree he is not the most accurate nor does he have the greatest ‘touch’, however, he attempts many more deep passes (now that schiano has unleashed him)

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Hackenberg and Cook may be getting the hype, but Cody Kessler had the best grade of QBs who can enter the '16 draft. http://t.co/GuY1I3fmBf